


His Place

by februaryink



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Masturbation in Shower, Memory Loss, Minor Violence, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:16:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2411297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/februaryink/pseuds/februaryink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier gets to take a shower and remember things he doesn't remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Place

There’s a place the Soldier goes when he’s alone and warm and half asleep. The alone part doesn’t happen often: a parade of subordinates and handlers and guards constantly march through his jumbled life. He can’t even take a piss by himself, most times. But when he’s done a particularly good job -- minimal casualties, no witnesses, target eliminated before the deadline -- they let him have a shower. A long, hot one, in a room all alone. He’s watched, of course, he’s always watched, but the door is closed and he can’t see the gun muzzles pointed at him, and isn’t perception everything in the end?

The Soldier doesn’t exactly remember that this is a rare occasion, but something about stepping under that hot spray of clean water feels precious. He turns his face up into it, concentrating on nothing but the feeling of the warmth against his skin, running down over his nakedness and washing the dirt and sweat away. His body is weary, his muscles tired, a dull ache making itself known in the reinforced bones in his torso. His metal arm feels particularly heavy. The cocktail of drugs they injected him with earlier make him feel mellow and slow, almost relaxed, definitely tired. The details of the mission are already fading away, things he’ll never have to know again, because the job is done.

They’ve removed everything from the room that could be quickly used as a weapon -- there isn’t even a showerhead to speak of, just holes in the metal ceiling pouring hot water down over him. He’s been given shampoo and gel soap in paper cups, and a sponge. The Soldier knows in a vague way that he’s there for a purpose, not just to stand in the water, so he goes about the mechanical process of getting clean. 

His metal hand pauses as he draws the sponge over his chest, the fingers tightening for a second as sensory memory flickers over him. It’s of being restrained, belted down, and someone else sponging him off, someone much rougher, someone impatient. But that doesn’t make sense, because he always washes himself ... doesn’t he? The Soldier’s skin breaks out in a wave of gooseflesh as he gets the ghost sensation of someone standing behind him. His head whips around, but of course there’s nothing to see but white gleaming tile. Thick brows drawing together, the Soldier slowly goes back to cleaning himself.

_Let me get your back._ The words echo dimly in his mind, devoid of context and sense, but there nonetheless. He ignores the creeping feeling this time.

Once he’s washed up and rinsed off, the Soldier settles into a position he doesn’t know he’s taken many times before. He braces his forehead and his metal palm against the wall of the shower stall, angled so the hot water can keep beating against his back. It feels like a comfort, something indulgent. He can feel the metal that takes up so much of his left side getting warmer, then hot. 

As he always does, he thinks that this is the warmest he’s felt in a long time.

As he always does, and never remembers, he starts to doze as he’s standing there, and his mind slips into that place. The one between awake and asleep, when he has nothing else to think about. There’s no mission, there are no reports to give, there are no soldiers’ body language to watch. It actually helps when they get him stoned; it’s easier to let go of himself. As much of a self as he has.

_Let me get your back._ The voice sounds closer now, behind him again, drifting up over his upper back and shoulder. Because the speaker is shorter than him. So much shorter and lighter. But his voice is deep and it makes a tiny smile twitch at the corners of the Soldier’s mouth.

“You just wanna look at my ass,” he murmurs against the tile wall. 

_Don’t flatter yourself, jerk._ It’s an insult, but something in the tone makes the Soldier sure it isn’t meant as one. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. 

The more he drifts, the more the Soldier can almost feel hands on him. For once, they aren’t strong, authoritative hands. Instead of firm and forceful, they’re gentle. And small. They drift up over his flanks and his back, thumbs pushing in where his muscles are the tightest, using the slickness of soap that’s no longer there to make them glide. Talented hands, his hands were always so skilled, as if to make up for the rest of him. The Soldier doesn’t know who he is, but he knows that much. The deeper into that place he retreats, the more sure he is, and it feels good to be sure of something other than mayhem and pain and death.

It was a hot bath, not a shower, then. There wasn’t ever enough hot water in the tank to fill the tub, so they would heat water on the stove and pour it in, in the big pot that his mother cooked whole chickens in. But never when said mother was home. No one could know. The Soldier can’t remember why, but he knows. He’s sure.

His skin prickles up again in spite of the heat, as he feels the ghost of full, sweet lips against the back of his shoulder. Those talented hands slide around his waist and down lower, exploring in ways that none of the girls he’s ever been with have explored. He leans back against that flat, thin chest -- but not all his weight, never all of it -- and nudges his head against that one that’s so familiar, but he still can’t see. Pleasure ripples through him and in the shower, the Soldier sighs a contentment that he can’t actually remember.

They have burst in through his precious closed door and are yanking him away from the wall before the Soldier has time to react. There’s a bit of pain as they pry his flesh hand away from his erection, and the sweet bubble of his half-dream place bursts as he headbutts one of them in retaliation. 

His body is not his own, and it’s a weapon. Always for pain, never for pleasure. One of the soldiers reminds him of the shower rules again as they give him a rough, cursory drying off, and get his legs into pants. As if he’ll remember. The Soldier is too sluggish and removed to really care about fighting back, the fuzzy memory-dream of being in that bathtub fading as quickly as the heat from his skin.

There’s nothing but exhausted blankness until they push him toward the cryo chamber. The Soldier’s heart starts to pound, and a murmured “No” escapes him. But his limbs are heavy and clumsy from the sedatives, and his bare feet can find no purchase on the cold concrete floor. The three armed men shove him inside and the door clangs shut before the Soldier can even turn himself around.

He looks up, panic gripping his chest as the valves open up and white smoke rushes into the chamber. It burns like fire, but the Soldier knows it’s not. It’s worse. He struggles to lift his metal arm, intending to break through the glass and save himself, but it gets stuck somewhere halfway up, and less than a second later, he can’t feel his flesh arm either. 

It’s always in this moment, as the rushing deep-freeze takes over his lungs and pushes the last of his air out, that Bucky comes back. It’s a moment of pure panic and animal terror as his heart trips, shudders, and then stops solid, and it’s the most himself he ever feels. In that moment, as he’s dying, before his brain fully shuts down, Bucky is very much awake and aware behind those blue eyes. He always tries to fight, but there’s never anything to be done.

There’s a place Bucky Barnes goes when he’s alone and frozen and not-asleep. There’s a boy there, smaller than him, with blond hair that catches the sun and falls into his eyes. His hands are talented and gentle, and he likes to explore when no one’s looking. They laugh there, and call each other names, and it’s always summer. The place never lasts long, just a sliver of time between acceptance and temporary oblivion, while the last of his neurons fire off before going still, and he’s buried again in torture and brainwashing. But it feels like it lasts forever to Bucky, and isn’t perception everything, in the end?


End file.
